HELLO, my fabulous, hard-working fellow teachers! Are you ready for a series of statistics lessons that will make every high schooler’s heart sing?? Whether you have been teaching for a week, a year, or a decade, you know that FOOD is what drives many high schoolers’ desire for learning. Personally, I have gotten even the most unmotivated student into a lesson by incorporating food, even in a superficial way. It is that fact, that drove me to make this amazing series of activities to use in your statistics, or AP statistics, classroom.
My Chocolate Candy Series on TPT is full of 10 activities to help you incorporate M&Ms™ into your lessons to help reinforce statistical concepts in your classroom. These activities can be used in the AP statistics classroom or the regular statistics classroom. Here is a brief summary of each activity, as well as a link to the individual product!
Activity Summary
Explore one-variable data using M&M™ candy (FREE ACTIVITY)
(Activity 1) In this activity, students will use a fun-size bag of M&Ms to create a bar graph; they will use the class data to create a class bar graph, and they will use the class individual data to create 6 separate dot plots. Students will then be asked about the difference between the bar graph and the dot plot that they created from the same data. There is also an extension on this activity, that asks students to create a pie graph by hand.
Explore scatterplots and linear regression using M&M™ candy
(Activity 2) In this activity, students will measure their hand span and then grab a handful of M&Ms. They will explore this linear relationship using scatterplots, the least-squares regression line, and the correlation.
Design an experiment using M&M™ candy
(Activity 3) In this activity, students will design an experiment, using the four principles of experimental design, to determine if they can taste a difference between the name-brand M&M candies and the generic chocolate-covered candies. The teacher and students will then carry out the experiment together in class and interpret the results. As an extension activity, students can perform a one-sample z test for a population proportion to interpret the results of the experiment.
The Binomial Distribution using M&M™ candy
(Activity 4) In this activity, students will practice setting up a binomial distribution and finding their probabilities. They will compare theoretical and empirical probabilities by sampling blue M&M candies from a population.
Exploring sampling distributions with M&M™ candy
(Activity 5) In this activity, students will explore the difference between the population distribution, the sample distribution, and the sampling distribution by sampling yellow M&Ms from a population. This activity reinforces statistics vocabulary, symbols, and formulas needed to understand the concept.
Exploring confidence levels in a confidence interval with M&M™ candy
(Activity 6) In this activity, students will create 10 confidence intervals to try and capture the known about of yellow M&Ms in their population. They will understand the difference between a confidence interval and a confidence level.
Conducting a significance test and interpreting the p-value and type I error with M&M™ candy
(Activity 7) In this activity, students will use a population of M&M candies to conduct multiple significance tests in order to understand the p-value and what it represents, as well as its connection to the Type I error. Students can use fun-size bags of M&Ms to build the population data and then use a calculator to simulate taking repeated samples from the population.
Conducting a significance test for a population mean with M&M™ candy
(Activity 8) In this activity, students will use a fun-size bag of M&M candies to determine if a claim from the manufacturer about the number of M&Ms in the bag is correct. Students will go through conducting a significance test for a population mean using the t-distribution.
Conducting a chi-square goodness-of-fit test with M&M™ candies
(Activity 9) In this activity, students will use a fun-size bag of M&M candies to perform a chi-square goodness of fit test. One test they will perform with their own bag of M&Ms and the other test they will perform with the class’s color distribution.
Conducting a significance test for a linear regression slope with M&M™ candies
(Activity 10) In this activity, students will measure their height and then grab a handful of M&M candies to analyze if there is a linear relationship between the two. Students will check the five conditions necessary for performing linear regression inference and then will find the test statistics and p-value to make a valid conclusion.
All 10 of these products are included in my Chocolate Candy Activity bundle on TPT. It is an amazing way to get students involved in hands-on statistics, using their favorite motivator: FOOD!
These activities include both the PDF version of the activity, as well as the editable WORD version, so that you can tweak anything you want to fit your own classroom. I always understand the importance of teachers putting their own students’ needs into an activity, so I always include the editable version in all the products you purchase. In addition to those documents, there is an instruction page as well as a detailed answer key to the activity.
M&Ms™ are the tool we use in all of these activities. Some of the activities require a single fun-size bag, multiple fun-size bags, regular-sized bags, or a container of M&Ms. It varies from activity to activity and some of the M&Ms can be reused between activities. Now, I know that sounds super gross, but I have a container of M&Ms that have been grabbed, counted, and put back in SO MANY TIMES, that I want to vomit a little at the thought of eating those. I always make sure to have extras on hand though, so students are still able to eat those amazing chocolate drops each time they do an activity.
The instructions page on each activity will let you know what materials are needed, but here is a full list of the supplies (links are to the amazing products):
- Fun Size bag of M&Ms (Activity 1, 6, 7, 8, 9)
- Regular Size bag of M&Ms (Activity 3)
- Generic Bag of Chocolate Drops (Activity 3)
- Container of M&Ms (Activity 2, 4, 5, 10)
I love using these activities on those days where you want to reinforce a statistic topic, but you want to make it fun. I took care of the work for you, now take these activities and put them into your classroom!
AP® is a registered trademark of the College Board® which was not involved in the production of nor endorses this product. M&Ms™ is a registered trademark of Mars, Inc which was not involved in the production of nor endorses this product.
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